New/Old Computer, Two Versions of Hoster & One External Drive

[Nitecat]

My basic question is......can I use one external drive with my songs for two computers that have different versions of Hoster (not at the same time of course)? Will the songs be numbered the same?

The background on my problem is.....I have an older laptop that I have used with an older version of Hoster for years. I would not be able to upgrade to the newest version of Hoster on this laptop because it doesn't meet all the requirements. I am very happy with this laptop and am fine with the older Hoster version, but because of it's age I decided last year that I should buy a newer computer "just in case". Karaoke Warehouse had a great deal on laptops last year before Christmas with the latest version of Hoster. I bought one, but just wasn't ready to deal with figuring it all out. I have continued to use my old laptop. My year of free upgrades on the newer laptop is about up, so last week I did all the upgrades. Now I'd like to get it figured out so I can use either computer if need be, but I only have one set of songbooks and one external drive with my songs. I am worried that the songs won't be numbered the same as the old computer. Can anyone help? I have searched the Hoster Help posts and can't seem to find anything that exactly addresses my problem.

[Roy Dennis]

The safest way to do this is to get another external hard drive and copy all your song folders to it and just use that drive for your new computer.

The Book Id's will end up the same on the new computer so your songbook won't alter.

The problem with using the same hard drive depends somewhat how old the other version is, but mainly there are more columns of data in the headers of the newer versions that the old versions can't read.
Also in the newer version there are more choices of Genre and if you set a genre in the new version that did not exist in earlier versions you get errors when rebulding the database on the earlier version.

[Nitecat]

OK, good to know. Thanks so much Roy. I can easily use different external drives for each laptop. I could even put the music on the C drive of the newer computer and not use an external drive. Surely that would work too, or do I need to use the same drive number for both?? I've seen something about that on here. I guess I'll have to be careful when adding new music to get it onto both. I was mainly worried about the Book IDs being the same, so my song books would still be correct for both. Now I just need to decide how I want to connect the video for the TVs. I am using s-video on my old laptop and of course I don't have that on my newer laptop. My old laptop is using something like version 3.12 (without going to my gear trailer and looking).

[Skybird74]

Originally Posted by Nitecat

OK, good to know. Thanks so much Roy. I can easily use different external drives for each laptop. I could even put the music on the C drive of the newer computer and not use an external drive. Surely that would work too, or do I need to use the same drive number for both?? I've seen something about that on here. I guess I'll have to be careful when adding new music to get it onto both. I was mainly worried about the Book IDs being the same, so my song books would still be correct for both. Now I just need to decide how I want to connect the video for the TVs. I am using s-video on my old laptop and of course I don't have that on my newer laptop. My old laptop is using something like version 3.12 (without going to my gear trailer and looking).

From my personal experience, you can rebuild and Hoster will know where to find the songs. But any Playlists that you have saved will only know the drive letter that was used when the songs were added to each individual Playlist. For that reason, when I use a different computer, I always keep my ext. drive the same letter as when I started using Hoster in 2006, because I still refer back to and use old Playlists when I do Show where I do all the singing.

[Roy Dennis]

Yes, you can just put the music on your C drive.
If your new computer has VGA or HDMI out you can use converter boxes to s-video or RCA video or go direct using HDMI lead.

Read this post in this thread for converter option and leads from Monoprice as posted by Rikki Tikki: http://forum.mtu.com/showpost.php?p=114379&postcount=17

If you import additional new tracks and want them on your old version as well I think it best to import them separately on each computer as version 3.xxx will definitely not be compatible with the new version. Just take care when doing this to match your Book id's.

[bryant]

Originally Posted by Roy Dennis

Yes, you can just put the music on your C drive.
If your new computer has VGA or HDMI out you can use converter boxes to s-video or RCA video or go direct using HDMI lead.

Read this post in this thread for converter option and leads from Monoprice as posted by Rikki Tikki: http://forum.mtu.com/showpost.php?p=114379&postcount=17

If you import additional new tracks and want them on your old version as well I think it best to import them separately on each computer as version 3.xxx will definitely not be compatible with the new version. Just take care when doing this to match your Book id's.

That's exactly what I do and it works well.